STATEMENT GAME

Saturday was moving day in the NHL’s Atlantic Division and everyone moved except for the Toronto Maple Leafs who, with their loss in Montreal were relegated to a wild card spot in the east.  With their wins, Boston was able to leapfrog in to second place (87 pts) and Tampa Bay in to third with 86 leaving the Leafs in 4^th with 85 points, just one ahead of resurgent Washington squad.  Tonight’s opponent, the Florida Panthers further solidified their division leading position (94 pts) with an OT win in Ottawa.

And what a story these Panthers are.  Door mats for years and years (last playoff round win – 1996) and hit with the loss of their Head Coach Joel Quenville early in the season, this current club continues to shine.  A balanced attack led by Jonathan Huberdeau (21G, 68A, 89 pts) and Alexander Barkov, solid goaltending from Sergei Bobrovsky and even a couple of Leaf minor league castoffs in Carter Verhaeghe and Mason Marchment have all contributed to the cause.

The Leafs continued with their fast scoring pace off the opening face off as Morgan Reilly ended a bit of a scoring slump to put the Toronto up 1 zip in the first minute.  That was Reilly’s 50^th point off a tip from his old pal TJ Brodie and Auston Mathews.  The Florida Panthers started a little slowly as the effects of 3 road games in 4 nights can do to a team.  Brandon Montour tied the game up as a result of the Panthers hemming the Leafs in for a significant amount of time.  The Cats have 6 x 20 goal scorers on their roster and it showed its potential during back to back power plays on marginal calls against Justin Holl.

Florida went back to their full court press mode early in the second resulting in another goal off a Nylander giveaway.  Not long after, the Tavares/Marner Power Play kicked in with Captain Johnny scoring his 21^st and 22^nd goals off of Marner primary assists.  The first assist was Marner’s 300^th as a Leaf, the fastest of any Leaf to get to that level so far.  The second was a beautiful tip in over the shoulder of Florida’s Spencer Knight from Marner and Reilly.  Interesting to note, the Leafs had actually outhit (25+) the Panthers in the game to date.

Ilya Mikaev was moved up to the second line to replace a wavering Nylander and although he wasn’t on with that unit when he took a pass from Marner, he was full measure for a beautiful deke goal to put a bow on the Leafs victory.  It was his 4^th in the last 6 games and Marner’s third assist of the night.  Auston Mathews took back the Rocket Richard goal scoring lead with his 48^th on the year on an empty netter with less than a second left making the final 5-2 Toronto.

HOPPER NOTES:  Final SOG were 31-22 Florida so hats off to a 29 save performance from Petr Mrazek…this was billed as a playoff preview and these two will go at it 3 more times in the next 3 weeks…although we haven’t seen much of the Panthers in this market, adding Claude Giroux and Ben Chairot has got to strengthen an already formidable squad…they missed their stud Aaron Ekblad tonight and I think they were kind of fatigued at the end… Tavares (2 goals), Marner (3 assists) Reilly 1 goal, 2 assists) were well deserving as the 3 stars…way to go Team Canada Soccer for clinching a spot in the World Cup for the first time since 1986…guys I’d like to have on my team: Radko Gudas…with Tampa winning today, Tuesday’s Leafs game in Boston will be all the more interesting (tied at 87 points)…RIP Taylor Hawkins – he’s on my top 10 list of Rock Drummers all time…

Cheers – Discuss – Enjoy life !